Hockey an advocate of Pseudonomics

First we hear from Joe Hockey that government taxation receipts belong to the tax payer - "It's their money". Well no, it is the Commonwealth's money Joe. Once the parliament, acting on behalf of the citizenry, legislates the taxes to be collected, that proportion of a taxpayer's income becomes the rightful property of the Commonwealth.

Australia, along with most other civilized countries, has a progressive system of taxation. Should the government need to adjust tax rates to improve the equitable effects of tax laws, it is not an argument in the negative to say it shouldn't be done because taxpayers tax obligations are "their money". If that were the case then there would no taxation, no Commonwealth, no welfare, and a state of anarchy. 

Then Joe doubles up on the pseudonomics and says that to tax the income from certain superannuation accounts would amount to retrospective taxation. Well no, Joe. retrospective taxation is when you tax income from previous years. Changing tax rates for income in years to come is not retrospective taxation. 

Why is this pseudo economist our federal treasure?

Terrorism or Incompetence?

The shooting down of flight MH 17 happened because the international air traffic control system is flawed.  We assume that in this area there are sound and competent people and systems in place.  But apparently not. We are astonished to find that air traffic control allows passenger jets to fly through zones where there is air warfare.  This is mind boggling.  It is the reason that this passenger jet was mistakenly shot down by the combatants in that war.

So Tony Abbott calling this terrorism is wrong.  It is so obviously wrong that he can only be knowingly using the tragedy for geopolitical purposes. It is disrespectful of the dead to lie about the cause of their death.  They died because air traffic control allowed passenger jets to fly through an air war. Again, it defies belief that this was the case.

Do I have to state the obvious?  Terrorism would require intentional and purposeful murder of civilians.

The Russian backed separatists had every reason to believe that all flights overhead were Ukrainian military.  They had been shooting Ukrainian military planes and helicopters down in the days and weeks previous to the MH17 tragedy. This was an established war zone, with air warfare being prosecuted. Why would a passenger jet be flying through there!? They were incredulous when they discovered that a passenger jet had been flying overhead, and that they had mistakenly shot it down.

You can be on any side of this conflict as you want, and you can criticize the Russians for supplying the weapons.  But it doesn't give you the right to dishonour the dead, to use their death for political purposes: you cannot call this terrorism, you cannot lie about the cause of their deaths.

The passengers of Flight MH17 are dead because air traffic controllers negligently and incompetently allow civilian passenger jets to fly through air war zones.  It was a tragedy that was waiting to happen.

Toxic Tony

Another bizarre turn of phrase from the Prime Minister.  He calls the carbon tax a "toxic tax".

But it is the excessive production of man made carbon, the thing that the tax is trying to reduce, that is toxic.

So it is not a "toxic tax", it is a "toxicity  reduction tax".  Go figure.

Tim Wilson

Watching Tim Wilson on One+One this morning and amazed to hear him say he thinks that plain paper packaging for cigarettes is an insult to all Australians.  He believes that by taking advertising from the product we are denying people choice.  To him we are insulting them by not crediting them with the intelligence to make their own choices about whether to smoke.

This seems ludicrous as by removing advertising, the psychological science of persuading people to choose by emotion and not logic, you would be improving the effectiveness of their choices.

As we all know, the opposite of what Tim Wilson thinks is true, that it is mostly advertising that is an insult to all Australians.  If you take it away you are more likely to respect all Australians.

Tim is from the IPA, a crazy ideological outfit who proselytise for the cult of the pure free market.  The IPA is funded by big corporations. The major thing that comes from pure free markets is wide disparity of incomes between the super wealthy and the (diminishing) middle class, concomitant with the growth of a permanent underclass. These two facts, put side by side, explains enough.

Tim Wilson and his fellow travelers talk of a nanny state.  First, that is funny as it is the wealthy who use nannies to mind their children.  Second, if the state's actions to reduce the incidence of several major morbidities is the behaviour of a nanny, then the behaviour of the advertising industry is a militarist father who dictates all of his children's movements.  They would probably appreciate the intercession of a nanny!

When I was in business and complaining about the cost of advertising I was told by an experienced adviser that "advertising works".  The annual amount spent on advertising and marketing in Australia each year is $15 billion, because...advertising works.  So the whole bullshit "nanny state", "consumer choice" argument is, well, "an insult to all Australians".

Who made this guy Human Rights Commissioner?  Oh, Tony Abbott.

Does that make sense?

I have often enjoyed attending public speeches as an intellectual entertainment.  But in the last couple of decades we have witnessed the rise of the spruikers: self appointed experts with a messianic style.  I started attending these events when I was in a wealth advisory job.  Prospective clients would sometimes tell me they had decided to sign up with one of the latest gurus to arrive in town.  I took to attending the seminars of these erstwhile competitors and found that they were often charlatans out to fleece an unsuspecting public.    

I was then in a position to warn against them.  But I also discovered that from a theatrical point of view they amused me.  I found that attending some of these seminars was better than a film.  And since the business model had become the offering of a free seminar I didn't have to pay.  Since then I have attended 30 to 40 seminars, which counts as a survey.  There is definitely a spruiker modus operandi.  Sometimes I would attend a weekend where several would present consecutively.  When presenting one after the other it becomes apparent that they have all been reading the same manual, right down to the phraseology.  A common one is, "does that make sense?"  Problem is they say it all the time, even when it obviously does make sense.  I am constantly hearing simple lines like, "If you wake up earlier, you have more time to work.  Does that make sense?"

The most interesting ones are the Americans, coming as they do from their great evangelical tradition.  They are the ones more likely to present themselves as guru's, with a certain religiousity or crpto-cultic feel about them.  The target market is mostly uneducated, vulnerable, or simple people who are looking to be saved, in this case economically.

The most interesting American who has been visiting these shores is a certain Dr John Demartini.  To begin with the salutation is not legitimate - he was apparently a chiropractor when he started out.  He looks about late 40's and claims he has been spruiking for 30 years, so even if you accept that chiropractors are doctors he hasn't been one for 30 years.  If fact he can't have been one for more than 5 seconds if you extrapolate from his own resume.  So, not really a doctor and not a doctor at all.

Demartini takes to the stage and does a thing that cult leaders do.  He designs his delivery so that the audience can't really understand it but are given to believe that this is because he is so brilliant that his rapid fire speech is evidence of his fast mental activity.  But of course it isn't.  It is a case of a guy who practices a lot.  He purports to strengthen his case of cleverness by claiming that he has read 30,000 books, the implication being that these are all non-fiction because in the same breath he talks about 269 "ologies", all of which he is well versed in.  Of course to an educated person this is ludicrous.  Knowledge is not a quantity, and I doubt that senior university professors have read that many books.  I am an avid reader of non-fiction and I guess that in 30 years I have read about 700 non-fiction books. I too like my 'ologies' and may have read 2,000 feature articles too, but that would translate into no more than an additional 200 books. In short, he has not read 30,000 books and if he has then he is not so much wise as insane.

Demartini motivates people to discover their "highest value" and design a life around that.  Basically you should do what you love.  But he gets off the topic and talks about curing depression and "dissolving grief" in minutes.  This does sound like the chiropractor coming out: they think that by cracking your back they can heal all your medical conditions.  I am not an expert but I would have thought that grieving the loss of a loved one for an appropriate period of time is healthy.  But why a career motivator starts talking about grief is curious.  I think that this is where he moves into the religious by toying with people's psychology, and tries to capture the audience, to acquire disciples.  During this phase of his seminar he actually started crying at the sadness that he said he felt for his failure to save the world from grief.  It was an impressive performance and certainly convinced those around me.  To confirm my belief that this guy is primarily a showman, during his seminar he often closes his eyes and holds his hands in the air like a preacher, like he is divining the spirits, and then utters a point of wisdom.

I once went to a satirical show called "Funk Development Program" where the "Guru" taught us how to get an invitation to the party that is going on "deep down inside of all of us".  I think I have the same experience when I go to see "Dr" Demartini.  To me he is a funny guy, but unfortunately many people pay $2,500 for his "Break Through Experience" workshop.  I do not have any figures on how many of these actually get any realizable benefits but I did read a survey from an American university once that reported that the lives of most of the followers of these self styled guru's do not change as a result of the seminars and books and workshops that they pay so dearly for. I do know one person who paid up twice and attended two Demartini workshops.  Three years later and nothing appears to have changed in his life.

Demartini claims that you will have a "break through" experience on the day of his workshop, "even if we have to continue until midnight".  First I don't believe in boot camp epiphanies.  If you haven't "broken through"  by 6pm I doubt you will have done so by midnight. You've only going to grow tired and be less likely to think straight.  What is he gonna do, speak in tongues and place his hands on your head?  It is well known changing lives is a process that takes months and years.  People would be better off seeing a psychologist or a life coach each week over a year or two.  This way they would be more likely to get results.

In the end I see these guys as an entertainment, a genre of performance art.  They do admonish you to do what you love and they also quote some actual wise people, so if you get something out of it all to the good, but don't bother paying for the workshop, its not worth it.